I woke up disturbed by some stuff at work.

But I really can’t talk about it here. Yesterday was a long church work day and left me exhausted and a bit off balance.

I met with my boss and we planned several services. More services than we usually look at at one time since she is taking a two week trip to the Virgin Islands during her Xmas break. As a result of this meeting I spent some considerable time choosing organ music and preparing information for the bulletins for these services. It’s work I enjoy but it definitely took up a lot of the day.

I continued carefully preparing organ music with an emphasis on “Les anges” by Messiaen.

I also spent a chunk of time writing a descant for this church’s Gloria which they will sing on Xmas eve when it returns (The Gloria is omitted during Advent in liturgical churches).

I was working on it at the computer and looked up and found that it was time to walk to church and practice organ some more before the weekly communal meal and evening prayer.

The children’s “whateveritis” rehearsed last night after the meal. I say “whateverits” because it’s hardly a choir, I had two new kids under age so I had four children, one in first grade, one in second, one in third, one in fourth. They even wanted to sit this way. Also the religious ed director had sent out an email to parents encouraging them to consider having their children come early to the Xmas eve service and play any Xmas songs they have learned on their instruments. The email said that it would be good if they came last night and played through their piece to prepare for this. So that was the reason for at least one of my new last minute singers. His mom and dad brought him even though he did not play an instrument. He seemed interested in singing so I encouraged him to stay.

One family that responded to this actually came early (as invited) and shared the communal meal and prayer before

I adapted my rehearsal to this situation (mixed ages, new people, 2nd and 1st grader who I could not assume could read).  This was made easier because of the time of year.

I pulled out Xmas carols with refrains to take the group’s temp ability-wise. The 2nd grader was very sharp and read like a 3rd grader as far I could tell. My wife assisted the 1st grader as needed to help her cope with not being able to read everything quickly.

The warm-ups I do with children are very interactive so that was no problem with such a range. Then I alternated pieces that had refrains (Glo-o-o-0-oh, o-o-o-oh, o-o-o-oh oria, een eggshellcease deh oh) with pieces the two who had attend before would know.

Repetition of familiar anthems and music is basic to teaching children.

I especially had fun last night playing my Messiaen piece for the kids.

We talk each week about a composer. The past few weeks we have been talking about Handel. I did this again last night and had them “Joy to the World” (again) and notice Handel’s name on the page as a composer.

Part of demonstrating organ for children is teaching them that I play with my feet as well as hands. So I played  a bit of Sunday’s prelude which is a movement from a Handel organ concerto so the new kids could see me using my feet. Then later in the rehearsal I called them back to the organ and played the entire Messiaen piece for them stopping and commenting on how Messiaen using music to help us see angels flying. At one point the music descends in a fluttering like pattern to a low note. Dame Gillian Weir has this lovely program note which I sort of quoted to the kids:

“Les anges” (The Angels): “a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying Glory to God in the Highest!” The music explodes into a kind of ecstatic dance, as the angels exult and the sun flashes on their jewel-studded wings, beating jubilantly. They swoop lower and lower over the crib, and for an instant are still; then soar into the sky again, circling ever higher until, in a cascade of trills, they are lost to view.

 

I like these observations so much that I also will quote them in the bulletin for the late Christmas eve service.

I usually write this blog pretty early in the morning, as Adrienne Rich put it, the time of morning, one shambles  “into another day, reclaiming itself piecemeal in private ritual acts.”

I recently added another of these private ritual acts and began posting the daily O Antiphon to the Grace Music Ministry Facebookistan page.

Also I seem to be getting up a bit later. I don’t have three 8:30 AM ballet classes anymore so I can sleep or lay in if I’ve a mind to do so.

It seems that family matters are heating up.

Yesterday I communicated with family in England, California, and West Virginia. I’m trying to connect my Mom to her older sister who is living in West Virginia. Mom has expressed a desire to talk to her. Yesterday my cousin, Jerry, my Mom’s sister Ella’s son, emailed  me his cell phone number. I put it in my Mom’s cell phone. She immediately took it and dialed it. Yikes. Jerry didn’t pick up. I was sort of relieved because I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a convenient time for him.

I decided yesterday to play Messiaen’s Les anges at the Christmas eve service. I was planning on playing Bach’s In Dulci Jubilo from the Orgelbüchlein as the postlude for the late service. I noticed that I played it last year. Seems like a good thing to repeat.

Playing Messiaen next Tuesday means that I will have to practice it pretty carefully between now and then. Today I have already slowly played through what Messiaen himself referred to as the “perpetual movement” of the last page.

Another private ritual I guess. Like scales in the morning.

Finishing up Mary Oliver’s Winter Hours. The title prose poem has some lovely stuff in it about morning:

“Morning for me, is the time of best work. My conscious thought sings like a bird in a cage, but the rest of me is singing too, like a bird in the wind. Perhaps something is still strong in us in the morning, the part that is untamable, that dreams willfully and crazily, that knows reason is no more than an island within us.”

Another later section of this prose poem caught my attention as well:

After describing how important the natural world of her seaside living is to her, how what she wants to describe in her poems is the “nudge, the prick of the instant, the flame of appreciation that shoots from my heels to my head when the compass grass bends its frilled branches and draws a perfect circle on the cold sands….” she goes on: “[L]iving like this is for me the difference between a luminous life and a ho-hum life. So be it! With my whole heart, I live as I live. My affinity is to the whimsical, the illustrative, the suggestive—not to the factual or the useful.”

She is definitely singing my song.

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Amid the Whiz of Bullets, Seeking Comfort in Song – NYTimes.com

This is the best report on this awful incident I have seen so far.  I note that it was written not in the passion of the first coverage but yesterday after a lot of the initial bad reporting was slowing down.

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Man Pleads Guilty to Defrauding Education Department – NYTimes.com

Mind boggling corruption. Faking helping to get funds and bribing officials to speed up the process.

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Daniel Inouye, Hawaii’s Quiet Voice of Conscience in Senate, Dies at 88 – NYTimes.com

This amazing man’s life shows that it can be done: one can be a statesman in America.

Good quote:

Mr. Inouye said. “Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideals or the rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals, we have little that is special or worthy to defend.”

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This is getting up late today. My server went down.

This was my fortune in my fortune cookie in my take away meal from Mr. You’s yesterday.

A couple of days ago I read this article idly in the New York Times:

When I read articles like this, I imagine there is a story behind it that will probably go unrecorded. Seeking a better life,  from wherever to Greece (of all places with it’s current troubles.

Drowned in the Aegean Sea.

Like Shelley.

Then the next day I read a prose poem in Winter Hours by Mary Oliver called “The Boat” which begins:

“I think a great deal about Shelley’s boat, a little world sailing upon the greater world, to whose laws it must, of necessity, submit. As we know, it soon carried Shelley to his death, and his friend Edward Williams and the boy Charles Vivian as well. The details we do not know, whether it was the wind mainly or altogether, or the leafy waves, or the wind and the waves together, or a larger boat bearing down through the sudden storm. But this we do know. Before it happened, I mean when they left land and sailed away over the Aegean, in the clear summer air, on the untroubled sea, the boat must have looked like a white bird, a swan, floating so lightly and rapidly it was all but flying. And sailing in it must have seemed like entering, with justifiable exhilaration and total faith, an even larger, lovelier, statelier and steadier world than the manifest ocean. As, perhaps, it was.”

This morning I read this poem in Raymond Carver’s Where Water Comes Together with Other Water.

The Squall

Shortly after three p.m. today a squall
hit the calm waters of the Strait.
A black cloud moving fast,
carrying rain, driven by high winds.

The water rose up and turned white.
Then, in five minutes, was as before –
blue and most remarkable, with just
a little chop. It occurs to me
it was this kind of squall
that came upon Shelley and his friend,
Williams, in the Gulf of Spezia, on
an otherwise fine day. There they were,
running ahead of a smart breeze,
wind-jamming, crying out to each other,
I want to think, in sheer exuberance.
In Shelley’s jacket pockets, Keats’s poems,
and a volume of Sophocles!
Then something like smoke on the water.
A black cloud moving fast,
carrying rain, driven by high winds.

Black cloud
hastening along the end
of the first romantic period
in English poetry.

***************

Focus my attention, indeed.

Finally I have to add this lovely poem by Mary Oliver from this morning’s reading.

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South Africa Since Mandela – NYTimes.com

Politician as pragmatist. It could happen. Mandela negotiated with the people who jailed him.

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Miss Manners on the Best Holiday Visits – NYTimes.com

Judith Martin. My heroine.

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A Critic’s Tour of Literary Manhattan – NYTimes.com

Fascinating look at bars, hotels and bookstores in New York.

I liked this especially:

While bookstores have been vanishing for years, stylish book-themed hotels are newly abundant in Manhattan. The Library Hotel, on Madison Avenue not far from the New York Public Library, manages to be sleek and geeky at the same time. Each of its 10 guest room floors is devoted to one of the categories of the Dewey Decimal System, and each of the 60 rooms has a set of books devoted to a topic within that category.

and

Here’s an odd factoid: Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the Chelsea Hotel.

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The third Sunday of Advent is sometimes referred to as “Gaudete” or Rejoice Sunday.

It is seen as an easing up of the somber aspect of  Advent. Advent I and II are more about  the  return of the Christ at the end of time.  Hence the pink candle in many Advent wreaths. Not sure this has much application these days.  I have watched the awareness of the historical understandings of the Christian liturgical year go from faint to irrelevant.

Nevertheless I persist in scheduling organ music, anthems and suggesting hymns to my boss that fit the theology and readings of the day.

So yesterday’s service began with an exuberant Buxtehude piece. A strong opening hymn with a descant.

A canticle based on a neat little Irish tune complete with fiddle like intro on the viola and a electric bass and piano accompaniment. A lovely sequence hymn with a descant.

Then the mood turned weirdly sober when my boss announced she was going to talk about the recent deaths in Connecticut.

She didn’t do too bad a job of connecting them to other more usual tragedies in our country (the violation of the presumed safety of the kindergarten classroom contrasted to the dangerous environment young people live and die in in Chicago).

But still it was a moment that I found a bit disturbing.

My antennae instantly went up and I began trying to see how affected the people in the room actually were by the deaths. I saw a couple of young mothers wiping tears from their eyes. I watched the weird reading out of the names of those who died during the prayers by the lector who had trouble (understandably I guess) keeping his composure.

We of course had more joyous Advent music to go. I considered improvising a more thoughtful introduction to our little Buxtehude anthem if the community was really grieving.

The moment when we greet each other, the Peace as we call it, eradicated this need.

The sound of people greeting each other was loud and relieved and it was suddenly two Sundays before Christmas again.

I found myself thinking about the falsity of getting worked up over one set of deaths in one place when one is unconnected to it.But this seemed of a piece to me of the general falseness our entire society is permeated with (including churches).

The little bits of TV coverage of the Connecticut tragedy I saw were hysterical and more about the reporter than reporting. In fact the reporting was pretty bad this time.

It’s obvious to me that when the world is so connected as a lot of it is now that when mind shattering events occur (as  they do daily) they are amplified in the manner that Rabbi Friedman used to describe.

He maintained that the media in the US was not the source of our stuckness and anxiety  Rather that it amplified it.

This effect is intensified with the immediacy of hearing about individual terrible occurrences  via the distorted medium of TV and the internet (the rumor mongering which occurs in the social networks and the lack of facts in the web site of choice).

Amplification seems a lame description. It feels more like listening in to the mind of a mental patient or a group of disturbed people who are babbling but not seeking any sort of factual understanding.

Secondly, since my church situation forced me to think more about this unthinkable occurrence, I can’t help but ask the question of evil.

Sadly, I find it easier to believe in evil than God. It’s something I’ve thought about. Hanna Arendt has influenced me to look in odd places for evil.

Her idea of the banality of the evil that Eichmann was convicted of in Jerusalem keeps me cautious so that I see evil not only in the gun barrel of the madman shooting children but also in the banality of our response to it.

We are human and we must respond with our feelings. But we forget that the story our screens is telling us is usually off. By a lot. And once again we are being manipulated.

To take such distant tragedy and to only use it as an expression of our own fears can lead us easily to be even more disconnected from ourselves.

God forbid that such an awful event be reduced to a tragic “reality” tv show or a juicy subject for our tweets and Facebookistan stati.

This will have to be quick. I am up a bit late on Sunday morning and I have to leave soon.

I think beginning my morning reading poetry by several poets is a calming experience. It reminds me on a daily basis that feeling and thinking are part of being human. That authentic voices are waiting in the actual lines of the letters of the words of these people who lived and breathed, observed and commented on being alive.

This morning I also started reading in a second biography of T. S. Eliot, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life by Lyndall Gordon. Although, due to a prohibition by the man himself, biography on Eliot is scant, this book by Gordon actually combines her two previous volumes into one and incorporates freshly released material.

In fact, in this century the prohibitions are falling away and I look forward to more information about Eliot.

I picture myself alternating chapters between Gordon’s book and Peter Ackroyd’s book I read in yesterday. That would be a fun way to read these books. They are both unique and eccentric in their approach. Probably won’t actually do it, but it’s a thought anyway.

Eileen and I went out for breakfast yesterday then Christmas shopping.

We brought home a tree. We set it up in the living room. This actually was a bit of hassle since the tree was unevenly cut on the bottom and we had to do a lot of adjusting to get it balanced.

Then we took the silly ceramic Christmas tree I bought for my Mom over to her room. She seemed satisfied with it. She even adjusted the nativity set I brought up from her storeroom. She is more engaged in Christmas this year than she has been. We rigged up an easy way for her to turn the little Christmas tree lights  on and off.

I did manage to get over to church and practice organ and prepare for today.

I am weary of church. I still enjoy many aspects of it, but having to deal with stressed people is hard on a lifelong introvert. I mostly try to do no harm as they say. But of course I continually fail at that.

It’s difficult because people  often do not realize how much they are telling you with their words and actions about their own distress.

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Looking for America – NYTimes.com

Some salient comments on the killing this week. I long for some sensible  prohibitions on the distribution of semi-automatic weapons.

when a gunman takes out kindergartners in a bucolic Connecticut suburb, three days after a gunman shot up a mall in Oregon, in the same year as fatal mass shootings in Minneapolis, in Tulsa, in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, in a theater in Colorado, a coffee bar in Seattle and a college in California — then we’re doing this to ourselves.

Gun deaths this year. Appalling.

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Man Stabs 22 Children in China – NYTimes.com

It’s hard to compare this to the Connecticut tragedy, but they happened on the same day. No one was killed in China as far as I can tell.

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Most Governors Refuse to Set Up Health Exchanges – NYTimes.com

People don’t govern so much these days as mount battles and resist each other. See the recent coup of Republicans in my own state.

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Catch Limits Put on Menhaden, Unglamorous but Crucial Fish – NYTimes.com

I have never heard of this fish but find the ecological web that makes them important fascinating.

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Bill O’Reilly Has Had It With the Name-Calling

At least name calling from the left, anyway.

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I finally got off my butt and went and did some Christmas shopping yesterday.  I like to buy local when I can. So I spent time in the local shops. Then came home and did some research, checking on stuff via the internet. Then back to the shops to purchase or order.

Along with doing bills (ours and my Mom’s — this also means balancing both check books), this quickly ate up the day. My brother telephoned from New Hampshire. Conversations are interesting because he sometimes reads this blog. But he said he appreciate hearing me say some of the same stuff because of the tone of voice which is absent from a page of words.

Today I will probably make a video of Sunday’s prelude. I do this primarily as a way to time it. I didn’t get a chance to practice organ yesterday but I’m fairly confident that I will pull off my little Buxtehude prelude (Praeludium, Fuge und Ciacona BuxWV 137).

I did find time to play a bit of Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus on piano. Lovely stuff.

Picked up a couple of bios of T. S. Eliot at the library yesterday. The one by Peter Ackroyd especially intrigues me. I have read other works by Ackroyd and admire the way his mind works and his wide ranging erudition. Read the first chapter this morning.

Eliot’s second wife recently died. This and daily reading from his poetry has me thinking about his life and my conception of it. I have lots ignorance about his life even though I have read (and even set to music) his poetry for decades.

The poem I read by him this morning struck pretty close to home:

*****

Lines for an Old Man

by TS Eliot

The tiger in the tiger-pit
Is not more irritable than I.
The whipping tail is not more still
Than when I smell the enemy
Writhing in the essential blood
Or dangling from the friendly tree.
When I lay bare the tooth of wit
The hissing over the arched tongue
Is more affectionate than hate,
More bitter than the love of youth,
And inaccessible by the young.
Reflected from my golden eye.
The dullard knows that he is mad.
Tell me if I am not glad!

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Some extra last minute reporting on On the Media’s podcast this morning regarding the misreporting in the Connecticut shooting. (Click on the pic to go their website)

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History, Who Needs It? – NYTimes.com

We do.

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Bill Boyarsky: Obamacare Begins – Bill Boyarsky’s Columns – Truthdig

Autism and Obamacare in Los Angeles.

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Bill Boyarsky: Obamacare Begins – Bill Boyarsky’s Columns – Truthdig

This injustice marches on unreported.

for too many in the mainstream media, led by the example of the editors of The New York Times, the recent military courtroom proceedings where Manning’s lawyer finally got to document the government’s attempt to destroy his client were largely a nonevent

I lost a filling on Wednesday. Front tooth. Yesterday I went to the dentist.

This lost filling was actually kind of a blessing since we are approaching the end of the year and we have only used about half of Eileen’s flex plan money. Money that we lose if we don’t use. My new crown (prepped yesterday and to be put in right after Christmas) will use up all the extra money. Lucky once again.

Eileen and I both were very tired all day yesterday. She said she didn’t sleep well. I don’t know why I was tired. I forced myself to practice and exercise as usual. My trio met and we rehearsed the first movement of Mendelssohn’s second piano trio. Good stuff.

Finished Glück’s Vita Nova this morning. I found it a bit unconvincing the way it’s tone and subject alternated from lofty to mundane. It seems to present itself as a sequence of poems that are somehow related. There is loss. There are many classical allusions some of which seem a bit forced to me. A couple good poems. What more do I want?

Bukowski on the other hand revels in the mundane.

I found these lines chilling this morning:

and the helicopter circles and cirlces
smelling for blood
search lights leering down into our
bathrooms

from “I live in a neighborhood of murder” by Bukowski.

And this entire poem:
*****
the bombing of Berlin

the Americans and English would come over, he told me,

there was nothing to stop them,

they had red and blue lights on their planes

and they took their time,

it was funny, you know,

a bomb would take out an entire block

and leave the block next to it standing,

untouched.

once after a raid, we heard a piano playing

under the rubble

and there was an old woman buy diazepam online fast delivery under there playing the piano,

the building had collapsed all around her,

buried her there and she was still playing the

piano.

after a while, when the planes came again and again

we wouldn’t bother to go underground anymore,

we just stayed wherever we were

on first and second floors and looked up

and watched

the red and blue lights and thought,

goddamn them!

well, he said, picking up his beer with a sigh,

we lost the war, and that’s all there is to

that.

*****

The image of the old woman playing piano under the rubble was one I liked.

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James Wood: The Novels of Per Petterson : The New Yorker

About half way through this article. Beginning to think I might have to read this author. Library owns three of his volumes.

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Glad tidings » The Spectator

Tony Wesley, my nephew Ben’s significant other, put this odd link up on Facebook. It points out how with a little perspective we live in a golden age.

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Officials Removing Quote From King Memorial – NYTimes.com

I didn’t know much about this controversy. I think I sort of noticed it in the background. Too bad they didn’t opt for the entire quote somewhere.

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Twenty-five Notes on the 121212 Concert : The New Yorker

Interesting review of a benefit concert for Sandy victims. A bunch of boomer stars.

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Ravi Shankar, Who Brought Sitar Music to the West, Dies – NYTimes.com

This obit helped me realize how much Shankar pointed me to world music. He’s not the only source of this interest but he is an enduring one. I love his life long connection both to classical Indian improvisation and experimentalism.

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http://www.tunewiki.com/

Daughter Elizabeth pointed this one out. It’s a spotify app that scrolls lyrics while the music plays on spotify. Very very cool.

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How much time in the last thirty or so years have I spent staring at a computer screen waiting for some engineer’s nightmare of a scheme to load up?

Back in the day of modems, I used to grab the paper and sit at the computer and wait for the processes to complete.

For a while this seemed to improve, but now I’m back to watching a screen do nothing.

I hear it from operators on the phone as well. After I have made my way through some damn phone tree of options and finally make it to a human being, they take the information and there is the usual pause.

“Waiting for it to load.”

Good grief.

I made it through Wednesday.

Wednesday is usually my hardest and longest day.

Yesterday was up and at helping Eileen prepare brownies for a good by treat for a worker at her job.

In fact they weren’t done baking when it was time for her to leave for work so I finished them up and cooled them and brought them to her.

Then to staff a church.

Church.

sigh

My daughter Sarah put up some photos on Facebook yesterday (Hi Sarah!).

One of them captured my mood about this time of year:

It’s complicated. And a trap. I think it’s a fake trap.

Over a christmas tree.

Hmmmmm.

After staff meeting I came home and grabbed something to eat, then went back to practice and prepare for the evening rehearsals.

I’m learning Les anges by Messiaen. I think I’ve mentioned that here before. My friend and colleague Rhonda Edgington performed this particular piece Sunday at her Advent recital.

I’ve been trying to understand what mode Messiaen used in this piece.

In the little introduction to all nine movements of the Nativity suite (of which Les anges is one) Messiaen lays out in quite some detail a synopsis of his modes and even mentions some of the movements as examples.

Curiously he doesn’t mention Les anges.

During the Wednesday church dinner as I waited for Eileen to get off work I figured out which mode of Messiaen’s it begins in.

Mode four.

I also noticed that it uses a bit of his mode 1 as well. The rest of us know this as the whole tone scale.

Not sure how important this sort of thing is to performers. But since this piece is largely scalar throughout and he neglected to mention it in his introduction I was curious.

Still cracking the code.

I think these sort of compositional self imposed limitations serve a couple of functions. First I think they assist with underlying subtle coherence that contributes to their beauty. Secondly I think they provide a strict parameter for the composer which allows him or her a certain freedom as well as a kind of distraction from the creating process.

I am reminded of these words about Gerard Manly Hopkins I read this morning.

The truth of the matter is that the poems do not require half the explanation Hopkins gave them, and to tell a further truth, he elaborates in such detail that it becomes finally obstacle rather assistance.

Mary Oliver, “The Poem as Prayer, the Prayer as Ornament: Gerard Manley Hopkins” in Winter Hours

That’s the trick really. When does information and technique cease to be helpful and become obstacle?

Weirdly, I turned from this essay to read a poem by my beloved Adrienne Rich. And there was Hopkins in the middle of it.

*****

IF/AS THOUGH

You’d spin out on your pirate platter
chords I’d received on my crystal set
blues purpling burgundy goblets
Lorca’s piano spuming up champagne flutes
could drop over any night at will
with that bottle of Oregon Pinot to watch Alexander Nevsky
if no curfews no blackouts no
no-fly lists no profiling racial genital mental
If all necessary illicits blew in
like time-release capsules or spores in the mulch
uprising as morels, creviced and wild delicious   If
Gerard Manley Hopkins were here to make welsh rarebit
reciting The Wreck of the Deutschland to Hart Crane in his high tenor
guessing him captive audience to sprung rhythm   as we in lóst lóve
sequences hearing it
skim uncurfewed, uncowled
pelicans over spindrift beating agnostic wings

for Ed Pavlic

2006

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 Chris Bliss Gets Bill of Rights Monument Built in Phoenix – NYTimes.com

If you’re wondering what Dick Gregory and Tom Smothers have been up to lately.

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IPhone Leads Drivers to Middle of Nowhere in Australia – NYTimes.com

I’ve been told this can happen right here in the good old USA.

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U.S. Will Recognize Syrian Rebels, Obama Says – NYTimes.com

With every step to correct earlier mistakes, he said, “they make a bigger mess.”

Maybe every December I go into this funk. I don’t know.

I do know that I’m easing out of my burnout since the end of my ballet class duties. Yesterday, my Mom was practically chipper as she went to her doctor’s appointment. She didn’t realize she was seeing her psychologist. His name is Dr. Thomas. She had confused it with her former pain doctor: Dr. Davis.

He thought she was doing well.

I told him I thought she had a period of depression after my daughters’ visit. He said that was pretty typical. I did say she had rallied in the last couple of days.

I brought up a fake scrawny Xmas tree and a wreath from her storage area to her room. She doesn’t remember that I gave her the fake tree one Xmas when she was deep in depression and wanted nothing to do with anybody or Xmas or anything. This year she thinks the tree is too scrawny looking. She asked for her ceramic tree which I had to tell her was discarded.

I promised her I would go to Bibles for Mexico and get her a new ceramic one. God knows they have them there.

Also she missed the red bow on her fake wreath. Again I assured her I would attend to this.

This is all to say that she is more interested in Xmas than she has been for several years.

Good signs.

Yesterday sitting in my Mom’s psychologist’s waiting room I read this paragraph in A. M. Homes’ May We Be Forgiven.

There is a world out there, so new, so random and disassociated that it puts us all in danger. We talk online, we “friend” each other when we don’t know who we are really talking to—we fuck strangers.

We mistake almost anything for a relationship, a community of sorts, and yet, when we are with our families, in our communities, we are clueless, we short-circuit and immediately dive back into the digitized version—it is easier, because we can be both our truer selves and our fantasy selves all at once, with each carrying equal weight.

I think this is a shrewd take on the online and offline world right now.

This disassociation must contribute to people’s anger and reactivity which dominates so much public discussion.

Mary Oliver’s little book, Winter Hours, contains four essays on four poets: Poe, Frost, Hopkins and Whitman.

At the end of the essay on Robert Frost which I finished this morning she quoted this lovely poem:

*****
My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

*****
Even thought we are almost half way through December, this poem fits my mood.

I’ll close with one more A. M. Homes quote. I had Eileen read this this morning. It shows how much of this book actually reads.

Brad is an employee from a pet store. Harold Silver has set up a free kitten stand right in front of the store. Brad comes out “wearing a tag that reads ‘Brad—Assistant Manager.”

*****

“What are you doing?” Brad asks.

“Giving away kittens,” I say, even though it’s obvious.

“”We sell kittens,” he says.

I say nothing.

“You’re going to have to move your pop-up shop,” Brad says.

“Sorry.”

“You’re competing with our interest.”

“But the ASPCA has a pet adoption stand right here every weekend.”

“Are you a non-profit?” Brad wants to know.

“I’m giving them away.”
“You’re small potatoes,” Brad says.

“I beg to differ,” I say,”Whoever takes these kittens is going to need supplies. How about just thinking of these five as a loss leader?”

“Loss leader?”

“The things a store is willing to lose money on in order to get people who will buy other things in the store. Milk, for example, is a common loss leader,” I say.

“Move,” Brad says. “Take your act over to the A&P. I’ll help you….” He picks up the edge of the table, and the carrier starts to slide.

I grab the carrier. “Take your hands off my table or I will call the police, and then corporate pet whatever, and have your dumb ass fired.”
“I’m a witness,” an old woman says. “I will testify.”

“It was an accident,” Brad says, and I sort of believe him.

“Tell it to the judge,” the old woman says as she helps me carry the table closer to the A&P.

“Do you want a kitten?” I ask her.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “I dislike pets almost as much as I dislike people. My husband says I should only shop online—that the world is a better place with me safe at home. He thinks I’m bad.” She shrugs. “I think he’s worse.”

“How long have  you been married?” I ask, laying out my flyers and supplies.

“Since the beginning of time,” she says and heads off.

from May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes

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Edith Windsor Revels in Gay Marriage Case Before Supreme Court – NYTimes.com

I found this woman’s story inspirational. She even built a harpsichord.

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Strauss-Kahn and Hotel Housekeeper Settle Suit Over Alleged Attack – NYTimes.com

So difficult to ascertain what happens behind headlines. But here’s a final chapter in last year’s scandal.

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The God Glut – NYTimes.com

Blake Page: Why I Don’t Want to Be a West Point Graduate

Atheist soldier-to-be breaks ranks with evangelical military types.

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Taking Aim at Michigan’s Middle Class – NYTimes.com

Michigan makes the NYT editorial page. Nice.

This sums it up:

Concern for the rights of individual workers, of course, is not the real reason business is pushing so hard for these laws. Gutting unions is the fastest way to achieve lower wages and higher profits.

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Charles Rosen, Pianist, Polymath and Author, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com

Although I didn’t always agree with this writer/musician, I always admired the way his mind worked.  Have read several of his books.

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First the more negative one:

*****

goodbye, my love

by Charles Bukowski

deadly ash of everything
we’ve mauled it to pieces
ripped the head off
the arms
the legs
cut away the sexual organs
pissed on the heart

deadly ash of everything
everywhere
the sidewalks are now harder
the eyes of the populace crueler
the music more tasteless

ash
I’m left with pure
ash

first we pissed on the heart
now we piss on the ash.

from The People Look Like Flowers: New Poems

*****

I especially like:

everywhere
the sidewalks are now harder
the eyes of the populace crueler
the music more tasteless

ash
I’m left with pure
ash

I know it’s  kind of a downer but it captures a part of my current mood.

Then a longer one by Louise Glück.

*****

The Nest

A bird was making its nest.
In the dream, I watched it closely:
in my life, I was trying to be
a witness not a theorist.

The place you begin doesn’t determine
the place you end: the bird

took what it found in the yard,
its base materials, nervously
scanning the bare yard in early spring;
in debris by the south wall pushing
a few twigs with its beak.

Image
of loneliness: the small creature
coming up with nothing. Then
dry twigs. Carrying, one by one,
the twigs to the hideout.
Which is all it was then.

It took what there was:
the available material. Spirit
wasn’t enough.

And then it wove like the first Penelope
but toward a different end.
How did it weave? It weaved,
carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs
with any suppleness, any flexibility,
choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.

Early spring, late desolation.
The bird circled the bare yard making
efforts to survive
on what remained to it.

It had its task:
to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,
patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude
of the exposed tree in the steady coldness
of the outside world.

I had nothing to build with.
It was winter: I couldn’t imagine
anything but the past. I couldn’t even
imagine the past, if it came to that.

And I didn’t know how I came here.
Everyone else much further along.
I was back at the beginning
at a time in life we can’t remember beginnings.

The bird
collected twigs in the apple tree, relating
each addition to existing mass.
But when was there suddenly mass?

It took what it found after the others
were finished.
The same materials – why should it matter
to be finished last? The same materials, the same
limited good. Brown twigs,
broken and fallen. And in one,
a length of yellow wool.

Then it was spring and I was inexplicably happy:
I knew where I was: on Broadway with my bag of groceries.
Spring fruit in the stores: first
cherries at Formaggio. Forsythia
beginning.

First I was at peace.
Then I was contented, satisfied.
And then flashes of joy.
And the season changed – for all of us,
of course.

And as I peered out my mind grew sharper.
And I remembered accurately
the sequence of my responses,
my eyes fixed on each thing
from the shelter of the hidden self:

first, I love it.
Then, I can use it.

from  Vita Nova by Louise Glück.

*****

Both poems are to me about a sort of desperation. One reacts with anger and despair, one with unreasonable optimism. I relate to both.

In “The Nest” I like this:

It weaved,
carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs
with any suppleness, any flexibility,
choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.

and

It had its task:
to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,
patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude
of the exposed tree in the steady coldness
of the outside world.

and of course this part of the ending:

And as I peered out my mind grew sharper.
And I remembered accurately
the sequence of my responses,
my eyes fixed on each thing
from the shelter of the hidden self:

There is something compelling in the bird building its nest out of refuse. Just as there is something about trying to be human and fix one’s eyes “on each thing from the shelter of the hidden self…”

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Election Brings Seasoned Politicians to Congress – NYTimes.com

I’ve always thought term limits unnecessary. There are already term limits built into the system. We call them elections. According to this article, the new House of Representatives will include nine people who have already been in congress. God knows we need real leadership these days to sort out the partisan madness.

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Who Will Hold Colleges Accountable? – NYTimes.com

One sentence especially struck me in this article:

many students at traditional colleges showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing,

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Bradley Manning lawyer: soldier’s treatment a blemish on nation’s history | World news | guardian.co.uk

Not so much coverage in the US media of the first time Manning’s lawyer speaks out in public. Hmmmm. Let’s see. Oh  I remember, the media is pissed at him. Margaret Sulliven (NYT Public Editor) covers the bad coverage well:

An Empty Seat in the Courtroom – NYTimes.com

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I’m beginning to think this might be an annual occurrence:  My disenfranchisement with church and its banality. Could it be related to the season?

Hard to say.

I do know that my schedule this previous semester combined with increasing duties at church left me pretty exhausted and burned out. Hopefully today I can do some recovering since today is my first Monday off in ages. Monday is the day I prefer to take off because Sundays take so much out of me.

Yesterday was no exception.

Sometimes making music with volunteers seems to be mostly a battle. A battle of wits and a battle where I try to stay one step ahead of people who resist and bully. I am repelled when people choose to make beauty a battle.

I tend to offer some guidance and then when it is ignored find as much peace in myself as I can.

I suspect this is the introvert in me.

Yesterday after church I couldn’t get away fast enough. People and their concerns grated physically on my skin. I needed to be away from what seemed to me as the banality of incoherent prayer.

In the afternoon yesterday Eileen and I attended Rhonda Edgington’s Advent organ recital. (Hi Rhonda!) She played music that I am familiar with and fond of. It was a delight to hear her. She is an excellent player.

Afterwards Eileen took me for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Eileen admitted that she had been thinking this would be a good for us earlier. It was.

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The Chill of Loneliness – NYTimes.com

So yesterday afternoon I took some time and read in a novel I am reading and admiring: May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes.

I read sections of it aloud to Eileen. This book’s brutality and desperation is an antidote to the banality I am seeing around lately.

Anyway, in one section the main character Harold Silver goes to visit his extremely pathological brother George at a mental clinic. He has come at the bidding of the crazy doctors. The doctors believe his visit will be good for George (who is a deranged TV executive and has murdered his wife). At one point the doctors insist that George and Harold engage in some “team building” exercises. The first one (transporting a balloon from one point to another with just their bodies) is uneventful.

But in the second one in which the doctors, George and Harold toss a football around George goes berserk,  tackles Harold and begins severely beating him.

After Harold leaves the clinic, he gets a weird phone call from his (and George’s) lawyer informing him that “the hospital asked me to inform you that you are not to visit again; they said you were threatening to the patient and staff.”

“I was physically attacked by George.”

“They saw things differently. In their eyes you provoked him, you wouldn’t throw the ball to him, you spoke only to the doctors and not to him, yo belittled him and made him feel left out and like there is something wrong with him.”

“Oh my God, that is so crazy. They’re nuts. It’s a freak show up there….”

This little scene popped to mind when I read this sentence in the article linked above:

“Research by the Purdue University psychologist Kip Williams, who programs these avatars to refrain from tossing the ball to certain human subjects, has shown that people feel bad when left out.”

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Justice Scalia Hearts Jack Bauer – Law Blog – WSJ

This is an old article that was linked in from a recent report I read. It horrifies me that a man as obviously brilliant (though misguided) as Scalia references an insipid TV show as a defense for the indefensible.

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A Tepid ‘Welcome Back’ for Spanish Jews – NYTimes.com

500 years later.

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 Art and Commerce Meet in Miami Beach – NYTimes.com

Interesting written report. Makes me want to read some of the art critics mentioned in it.

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Two poems from this morning’s reading.

First the ending of one of Ai’s long poems in her book Dread.

The poem is called “Intercourse” and is dedicated to John Kennedy Jr.

It seems to describe the poet meeting Kennedy (He is called John in the poem) in a erotic encounter in a dream.

She can’t believe it’s him, but he quickly disappears.

The poem ends with this wonderful image: (it is the voice of the dream lover speaking)

*****

… I sink into a puddle of saltwater,

as you finally relent and call my name.

It’s too late. I came and went

in the same instant it took you to realize

you’d captured your prize only to lose him

as  he slipped between your things,

but could not penetrate the sealed landscape,

where celebrity creates an alternate reality.

There fact and fiction lie

one atop the other fucking furiously,

when one surrenders unconditionally,

the other dies.

*****

from “Intercourse” by Ai

The other poem is by Raymond Carver.

*****

Rain

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance.

*****

from Where Water Comes Together with Other Water by Raymond Carver

These two poems neatly parse my mood. The first addresses my reoccurring wrestling with the concept of celebrity. I like how Ai evokes the image that fact and fiction are both on top of each other and how each negates the other. I don’t entirely buy it of course but it is compact way to think about it.

Both poems are melancholy. Melancholia dogged my steps most of the day yesterday.

The misfortunes of my extended family weigh on me.

In the afternoon I dropped by my Mom’s room at the nursing home with books for her to read. I systematically take her old books to the library, enter them in a list I keep of  the books she has read or had the chance to read, search for new ones and then check them out and take them to her.

The room was dark, shades drawn. The bed was unmade. Mom was sitting in her chair sleeping probably. I suspect she is wrestling with depression. I sat with her a bit. I gently chatted with her. She told me she had skipped lunch and stayed in her room. They brought her a bit of food which she presumably ate. When I asked her why she said she wasn’t hungry. When she got up to go to her bathroom, I opened the shades and rainy light poured into the room.

When she came back I interested her in my brother the priest’s latest newsletter which his church had mailed her. She asked for her glasses and looked through it.

Then I booted up her little laptop and showed her some family pics on Facebook.

By the time I was leaving she was feeling hungry (she said). I asked her to go for a little walk which she did. She didn’t bother with her shoes and walked around with me in her stocking feet.

While we were walking the halls of her nursing home I asked her what she was thinking about these days. “Not much,” she replied.

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UN climate talks in Doha reach agreement – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

Key points of the Doha deal – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

I first read this articles online about Climate Talks going on. This morning I found some more articles:

Ignoring Planetary Peril, Profound ‘Disconnect’ Between Science and Doha – NYTimes.com

This article seems to try to justify the weak coverage of the talks in the US media.

I had to read an Australian article to find out that “The United States has never ratified the agreement. Round two, which will take effect on January 1 and run until 2020, has been further weakened by the withdrawal of Russia, Canada and Japan.”

This is from the following link:

Doha climate talks fall short, critics say

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Harlem to Say Goodbye to the Lenox Lounge – NYTimes.com

A careful reading of this article shows that it’s possible the new owners will preserve much about the lounge.

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Dinosaurs and Denial – NYTimes.com

This article reminded me of a conversation I had with my brilliant cousin who is an engineer and works for the government in DC. Even with his excellent technical mind he firmly believes in creationism. Has been to the museum described in this article.

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So. A couple of days without ballet classes. I suppose they will invite me back next semester, but one really never knows. The chair usually emails me when she starts thinking about the schedule. It is a relief not to have to do a class every day of the week, Monday through Friday.

Yesterday instead of toddling off to do my usual Friday 8:30 AM, I made Eileen and me breakfast. I miss cooking so it was fun. She had the day off as well.

I wonder if improvising daily does anything to my impulse to compose. I haven’t written anything in a while. I’m usually inspired to write for specific musicians. I keep eyeing my piano trio and thinking it would be fun to write for us. Even though the musicians don’t really like “contemporary” classical music they have both played my compositions and arrangements in the past and seemed to enjoy them.

It’s been a few years since I have been invited to play at the local coffee shop. I can only wonder why. I think that the owner’s insistence that he man the sound system for gigs sabotaged me last time. The sound people were musicians from another band, much younger of course. They seemed unfriendly. They also did a very poor job.

I keep fantasizing if I were to do something like that again in public I would insist on good sound reproduction. Listeners expect a smooth mixed balance.

I also keep thinking of an interview I saw of a famous studio bass player. She said she had quit playing in public because no one really wanted to see an old grandmother up there playing. She may be on to something.

I do realize that much of music performance these days is about perception not sound. People often fall in love with the celebrities more than the music. So it seems.

I do find music continues to be more and more satisfying to me. I have to face the fact that I have blocked myself in, venue wise. I have deliberately continued to be that boy who sat in his father’s empty church in love with the sounds he found under his hands from the piano.

Eileen and I were talking yesterday about my need for solitude, my need to be alone with my music. It is something than anchors me, that’s for sure.

I do know that one cannot do music only alone.

Music demands to be heard by listeners. It demands to be done by groups of people. At this point, it seems that church is serving for me in this way.  It is my only venue really. That and the internet, I guess.

Yesterday I did listen to the music of the musicians in the article I linked: “Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba from Cuba, Danilo Pérez from Panama and Egberto Gismonti from Brazil.” I found myself seeking live recordings of their work.

In the Spotify mini-bio of Egberto Gismonti, it mentioned that he was influenced by Villa-Lobos.

I pulled out my little Dover piano collection of his work and played through several pieces. They were beautiful and if my piano sounded better I might have made a YouTube video of some of them. Maybe I’ll do that today.

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Alan Moore’s Neonomicon censored by US library | Books | guardian.co.uk

Never head of this. Instantly interlibrary loaned it.

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GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan | The Nation

This morning I am feeling gluttonous, gluttonous for beauty.

Reading poems by seven poets first thing in the morning. There’s always at least one good one or one that hits me.

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The Swan

by Mary Oliver

Across the wide waters
something comes
floating–a slim
and delicateship, filled
with white flowers–
and it moves
on its miraculous muscles

And then there was this short story in this month’s New Yorker:

Steven Millhauser: “A Voice in the Night” : The New Yorker

The story is divided into three alternating sections: a retelling of the story of Samuel being called by the Lord in the night, an old man’s recollection of himself as a boy and his reaction to the story, and the same old man’s wrestling with insomnia and his own past.

There’s a lot of waiting in these stories. I put it up on the Facebook Grace Music Ministry page. I like how it deals with the idea of vocation quite a bit. Holy crap. I keep returning to Christianity. Helplessly I guess.

My ambivalence reminds me of Jonah and his bible story.

He keeps getting it all wrong. He gets thrown in the whale (big fish) for refusing to do what he is meant to do: prophecy to the people of Ninevah. After he is finally convinced to do this, they try to reform and don’t end up paying consequences for their sins. He ends up seeking shade from a plant which God causes to be destroyed by a worm to give Jonah an object lesson in undeserved grace. Jonah probably doesn’t get it.

Neither do I. But I continue to find myself connecting to the Christian story despite my own disbelief.

I also feel gluttonous because yesterday I spent a lot of time with Mendelssohn. My piano trio is learning two movements by him: the Finale of his early piano trio and the first movement of the later one. They are gorgeous full of lovely themes and beauty.

I rehearsed the Finale myself at the piano yesterday and then the trio rehearsed the other movement together.

Before that our oboist joined us and we rehearsed the Frescobaldi Canzoni we have been learning.

This is all nice stuff.

The group agreed to allow me to look for more music that would fit our instrumentation (Oboe, Violin, Cello, Keyboard).

The only caveat is (since I am seeking only music we all enjoy) to avoid contemporary music.

This is a small price for me to pay to have these wonderful chamber music experiences.

I can explore the musics these people aren’t as interested in by myself.

Which is more beauty that I experienced yesterday as I worked on some Messiaen organ movements from his Nativity Suite.

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Origin of the Romani People Pinned Down | LiveScience

The Roma or Gypsies have lived on the margins of European society for centuries. They marched alongside the Jews and other groups to Hitler’s death showers.

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BBC News – Netflix rebuked for Facebook post

This perplexes me. Is it another case of society being behind the curve?

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Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba at Carnegie – NYTimes.com

I bookmarked this to check out the performers on Spotify and YouTube.

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Dave Brubeck, Jazz Musician, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

This man had a huge impact on my musicianship. I started out playing from his piano books and at one of my last coffee house gigs performed “Blue Rondo A La Turk” a piece I have loved for ages.

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Lincoln Against the Radicals | Jacobin

Steven Spielberg’s White Men of Democracy « Corey Robin

‘Lincoln’ versus history: Screening out the past – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

Sooprise sooprise. History is distorted by the new Lincoln movie. I think it is astute to realize that this movie is about current American politics not history. But it’s unfortunate that it perpetuates so many myths of the Civil War and Lincoln.

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I was playing my last fall term ballet class yesterday. Lately my improvs have been more rhythmic. I think melody of course, but I have been trying to come up with an interesting beat and a simple melody. Then as I am required to repeat it over and over for the ballet combination I begin to riff on it more and more sort of like a jazz improv or something.

As I watched the dancers move with simplicity and elegance yesterday I thought of the many time I have played for dancing in my life. And the many times I have performed music in general.

If I try to remember my early music performing experiences one of the earliest was playing my rusted cornet for the Sunday School class at the Church of God in Greeneville Tennessee where my Dad was the minister.  That’s how we called him those days: the minister.

I had forgotten to empty my spit valve so from the first note the sound was garbled.

I didn’t know what to do so I just played the entire melody through as I had planned gargling away on it. Mortifying. The woman who was leading the class tried to smooth it over by saying it must be hard just to play “one of those things.” Her name was Maxine Humphries and she spoke with a soft southern accent. She probably still does. Back then she was a local radio announcer and practically a village star in Greeneville.

Probably I had other early performances in churches. I don’t remember them like that one.

There is a family story about my uncle Dave, my Dad’s oldest brother, attending college classes with my grandfather Benjamin at the new Church of God college in Anderson Indiana. Dave was precocious in the way of first-borns.  He tagged along with his dad and sang and impressed the other students and the teachers.

I don’t remember any other stories about him or my Dad or my uncle Jonnie about doing music as a kid.

Of course all three men were musicians.

Dad and Jonnie were trained and did a lot of performing. I got the idea that Uncle Dave did his music for fun and joy. At his 80th birthday when he was in full blown Alzheimers he jumped up and sang the Internationale in full voice startling everyone.

I miss him.

By the time we moved to Flint Michigan in 1963 I must have been playing both piano and cornet, mostly by ear. I remember some listening experiences at this stage, playing in the school band, but not much performing at church other than maybe singing in a choir.

I remember enjoying playing piano alone at church. Something I still do but now I’ve added organ.

In high school I played in a pick up wedding band called Guy and the Versatiles.

I played trumpet and a bit of electric piano. Mostly I remember Guy (who was younger than me) sneaking drinks at wedding receptions then being drunk enough to puke on my shoes.

I also remember working with other high school musicians and dancers. Specifically I remember playing for dancers and singers who were hired to play the Flint Republican Party Convention. It was at this convention that I got my first time of playing with actual Jazz musicians. The Sherm Mitchell trio was booked for the convention as well. When the dancers danced I played piano and they played along (as I remember). Sherm Mitchell played trombone and Jazz oboe. He made a big impression on me.

Toward the end of high school I was playing some weekend gigs where we would rent a trailer in Flint and drive to Oscoda to perform on the Air Base there.  What I remember about these performances is how much fun it was to improvise on the tunes we played. I’m sure there was dance.

Later I was in a house band in a bar in East Tawas. This may have been the first time I really thought about the dancing going on while I played. Since we were the house band we would see the regulars each weekend jump up and start dancing on the first song. I liked that.

So yesterday being relieved that my semester was coming to an end and playing for my last class I was thinking about how much I enjoy improvising so that people can dance whether it’s classical ballet or thinking about the many dancers I have played for and with over the years.

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Despite Bob Dole’s Wish, Republicans Reject Disabilities Treaty – NYTimes.com

Democrats make me crazy but Republicans seem to live on a different planet these days.

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China – Tibetan Monk Kills Himself in Fiery Protest – NYTimes.com

More than 90 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009

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Nasrin Sotoudeh, Iranian Rights Advocate, Ends Hunger Strike – NYTimes.com

There are some brave people in the world.

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How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession – NYTimes.com

This reads like a novel.

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Henri Matisse’s Rare 1935 Etchings for James Joyce’s Ulysses | Brain Pickings

Cool or what?

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I am disappointed in this. I had hoped that the people who made this from Burgess’s play would take advantage of the aural and add the actual Beethoven music (in snippets of course) that fit each of the four sections of the story. Bah.

BBC iPlayer – Drama on 3: Napoleon Rising

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finally — apologies if you tried to click on this video yesterday and it didn’t work. I thought I had clicked the switch to make it public, but apparently I hadn’t. Thank yous (and specific apologies) to Johnny Keene for emailing me about this).

I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I now have seven (seven!) books of poetry laying around my comfy chair. I have reading a bit in each one. Poems by Bukowski, Eliot, Mary Oliver, Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich, Ai and Raymond Carver.

Quite a crew. This morning I was struck how so many of them use narrative in their poetry: Bukowski, Carver and Ai especially. Eliot does this to some extent. Vita Nova by Louise Glück which is the book of hers I am currently reading uses mythology as a backdrop for her personal stuff.

Mary Oliver’s book Winter Hours seems to be a meditation in prose and poetry that I am finding very moving and helpful.

Examples from this morning’s reading:

A few years ago I heard a lecture about the Whitney family, especially about Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney, whose patronage established the museum of that name in New York City. The talk was given by Mrs. Whitney’s granddaughter, and she used a fine phrase when speaking of her family—of their sense of “inherited responsibility”—to do, of course, with received wealth and a sense of using it for public good. Ah! Quickly I slipped this phrase from the air and put it into my own pocket!

For it is precisely how I feel, who have inherited not measurable wealth but, as we all do who care for it, that immeasurable fund of thoughts and ideas, from writers and thinkers long gone into the ground—and, inseparable from those wisdoms because demanded by them by them, the responsibility to live thoughtfully and intelligently. To enjoy, to question—never to assume, or trample. Thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me–to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always care-ingly.

Here I want to say for me the “great ones” are composers and poets.

Forebears, models, spirits whose influence and teachings I am now inseparable from, and forever grateful for. I go nowhere, I arrive nowhere, without them. With them I live my life, with them I enter the event, I mold the meditation….

Oliver captures the way Bach and others linger in my day to day existence. I’m learning (relearning) a couple of Buxtehude pieces for a week from Sunday. One of them, the Jig Fugue as it is sometimes called, is one I have been playing for years.

I learned it out of the E. Power Biggs bastardized version many years ago. I had very little organ technique then but it has stayed with me all these years.

Yesterday I looked at a better version seriously. I am going to play it from a new edition (probably). At any rate, Buxtehude like Bach like T. S. Eliot and a long list of people are people to whom I am “forever grateful” in Oliver’s phrase. “I go nowhere, I arrive nowhere, without them. With  them I live my life…”

Another of these is Couperin. Here’s a little video I made yesterday of me playing a piece of his chosen at random. I do love his work.

Sorry about the sound.

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BBC iPlayer – Drama on 3: Napoleon Rising

This makes perfect sense. Burgess wrote his book in the mold of Beethoven’s third symphony which was written as a tribute to Beethoven (later disavowed when he declared himself emperor).  A radio play allows use of the music that inspired the biography. Cool.

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I have taken to reading books of poetry from the library and occasionally putting one that I find in a doc so that I can read it again.

Yesterday morning I found this one by Raymond Carver:

Happiness

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

from Where Water Comes Together with Other Water

It captures the sense of well being that comes over me periodically. I didn’t post it yesterday because  of my own sadness. It seemed sort of out of kilter for that particular morning. But I’m gradually pulling out of that sadness so I thought I would put it up today.

I tried to take some of yesterday off.

Mondays are good days for me to coast, but this past term I have had an 8:30 AM class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. So Monday has felt a bit relentless. Thankfully this term is almost over. I am grateful for the work (and the subsequent online access to excellent resources). So I’m not complaining too much.

I spent an hour last night with middle aged bass player. I had invited him to learn a few licks for Sunday. He doesn’t read music. He loves music though especially the Rolling Stones. While I was treadmilling yesterday I played a Rolling Stones playlist and thought of this guy.

Recently I listened to an academic type person talk about the movement of what he called the “eye” to the “aural.” For some reason he felt that we are moving into a time when we don’t use our eyes to read. He mentioned that many musicians don’t read music. He mentioned that many congregations sing their praise songs from memory or just from words on a screen. I didn’t quite get what he was trying to say.

This article which I linked recently and finally read inspired me to go back to organizing my photos on my exterior hard drive. It also seems to speak a bit to what my academic acquaintance was thinking about.

A Lament for the Photo Album – NYTimes.com

My bass player from last night doesn’t really read music.

I try to encourage people to look at music and make sense out of the picture of sound it draws. I encourage guitarists to at least follow lyrics and/or get a sense of the larger form of the piece we are playing together.

I have high hopes that my work last night with this player will enable him to perform with us on a choral anthem Sunday which uses a repetitive (and important) bass lick throughout.

In the meantime, my predilection for literacy in general brings this poem by Adrienne Rich I read this morning to my mind:

Archaic
By Adrienne Rich

Cold wit leaves me cold
this time of the world Multifoliate disorders
straiten my gait Minuets don’t become me
Been wanting to get out see the sights
but the exits are slick with people
going somewhere fast
every one with a shared past
and a mot juste And me so out of step
with my late-night staircase inspirations my
utopian slant

Still, I’m alive here
in this village drawn in a tightening noose
of ramps and cloverleafs
but the old directions I drew up
for you
are obsolete

Here’s how
to get to me
I wrote
Don’t misconstrue the distance
take along something for the road
everything might be closed
this isn’t a modern place

You arrived starving at midnight
I gave you warmed-up food
poured tumblers of brandy
put on Les Barricades Myst¿rieuses
— the only jazz in the house
We talked for hours of barricades
lesser and greater sorrows
ended up laughing in the thicksilver
birdstruck light

from Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006

Les Barricades Mystériuses is a piece by François Couperin that I play and love.

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Lies! Murder! Lexicography! Dictionary! – NYTimes.com

I love words. And I love articles that mention the Oxford English Dictionary. This article led me to this blog which I bookmarked to check in the future:

harm·less drudg·ery | life inside the dictionary

I relate to the quote mentioned in the first article and which gives the blog its name:

“If you saw how dictionary editors actually went about their day, you’d quickly understand why Samuel Johnson famously defined “lexicographer” as “a harmless drudge.”

Harmless drudgery….. archaic … this is how I see myself I guess. In a good way.

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Chinese Media Partly Retreat After Reports of Court Verdict – NYTimes.com

Fascinating to follow evolving law in China. I’m interested because my daughter lives there and my son-in-law teaches law there.

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Some new books from the New York Times Sunday Book Review

‘The Graphic Canon,’ Edited by Russ Kick – NYTimes.com

‘Glittering Images,’ by Camille Paglia – NYTimes.com

‘Gaudí Pop-Ups,’ by Courtney Watson McCarthy – NYTimes.com

‘Regarding Warhol – Sixty Artists, Fifty Years’ – NYTimes.com

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Q. and A.: Joe Queenan on Books Classic, Trashy and Otherwise – NYTimes.com

I’m always interested when a reader mentions a bunch of books.

Pete Townshend – By the Book – NYTimes.com

Whether they’re famous or not.

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100 Notable Books of 2012 – NYTimes.com

This is how my bookmarks on Digo appear. The list below the link represents titles I have either read or would like to read in the list.

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“Better Be Ready” is in the “work song” style of African American Spirituals. It also utilizes “call and response” which is an important contribution to subsequent American music.

Recently after a church service a woman came up to compliment the use of the day’s opening hymn. She said that she did not care for the African American Spirituals we had used that day but did appreciate the classic hymn we used for the procession.

I thanked her but pointed out what an important part of American heritage the spirituals were. That they were something to treasure whether we “liked” them or not. The whole thing left me feeling slightly soiled.

I admit that I was in a sort of bad mood when she approached me. But still. Yuck.

My personal feeling is that the American history of enslaving people and then the absorption of these people into our cultures and  histories is both a tragedy and a source of national identity and heritage.

I mean specifically the great works that draw on this mix of Europe and Africa and other places. I of course see the sorrow songs that are called spirituals as a deep source of authenticity and Americanism. Out of the evil of one human being owning another come these cries of the heart filled with beauty and wisdom.

And then there is Blues and Jazz both towering contributions to human culture.

Not to mention that the popular culture and music of the 20th (21st) century is informed by these three contributions: Spirituals, Blues and Jazz.

It takes my breath away when I think I am in the presence of blindness to the beauty and importance of these and other human contributions.

Maybe I’m just grumpy.

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A Health Insurance Detective Story – NYTimes.com

if a seasoned personal-finance journalist can’t get a straight answer to a simple question, what chance do most people have of picking the right health insurance option?

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Nun Brings Music and Strong Message to Her Ministry – NYTimes.com

I don’t know this music but this is a very inspiring story to me.

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A Triumph of the Comic-Book Novel by Gabriel Winslow-Yost | The New York Review of Books

Review of book I am reading.

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A Lament for the Photo Album – NYTimes.com

Bookmarked to read.

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We saw off my daughters at the airport yesterday.

Parting is difficult, especially for my daughter Sarah who feels homesick quite a lot in England.  They managed to arrange the first leg of their journeys together and flew from Grand Rapids to O’Hare.

They texted and emailed a couple photos they took on the way.

Sarah just put up on Facebook that she is home.

While we were waiting for their plane, I succumbed and started 3 Word with Friends games (fake scrabble on Facebook) with Sarah’s significant other, Matthew, Elizabeth and Eileen.

This seems to be the primary way I will keep in touch with Matthew since he is shy of web camming and emailing and snail mailing and phone calling. What the heck. You take people where you find them.

He is excellent at Scrabble, also passionate and highly competitive.

I came home from the airport yesterday and managed to get some organ practice in. This is more fun than it has been since the organ guy came and tuned the organ and repaired some ciphers (sticking pipes).

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The Real Thomas Jefferson – NYTimes.com

I find it so annoying when people reassess historical figures using contemporary understandings and failing to make the leap of imagination about what it was like to be alive then. Certainly Jefferson had feet of clay, like all human beings. But his contribution is important regardless and is not negated by the fact that he failed to understand the evils of slavery and racism in his time like practically every other white person in America.

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On Religion – Andy Statman’s Search for God in Music – NYTimes.com

Will definitely be spotifying some of these musicians.

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Syria internet access restored after two-day blackout | World news | guardian.co.uk

I guess the rebels were wrong about the government blackout of internet being the first step in the final push to get rid of them?

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I had lunch with my friend Rhonda and the Hope Chapel Dean, Trygve Johnson. Rhonda arranged this so that we could meet him and talk about him doing an AGO meeting.

He looks a bit like Jason Jones (Semantha Bee’s husband).

I don’t think I was able to make sense to him when we conversed.

Rhonda said that sometime my connections from idea to idea can be difficult for people to follow.

Also that I talk a lot.

All true, I’m sure.

We watched “The Story of Mankind” last night. It was fascinatingly bad.

Three Marx brothers were in it.

Dennis Hopper was Napoleon.

Vincent Price was “Mr. Scratch.”

The movie was in color. Elizabeth googled it and it turns out to have been the Marx brothers last screen foray.

who knew?

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India to Revise Enforcement of Internet Law – NYTimes.com

Internet and Main Airport Shut Down in Syria – NYTimes.com

Internet stories.

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Cultivating Vultures to Restore a Mumbai Ritual – NYTimes.com

Vulture numbers are diminishing due in part to the fact people who are dying are using a tylenol like drug for pain which then harms the vultures when they eat them. I love this practice of having vultures destroy human corpses.

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60-Million-Year Debate on Grand Canyon’s Age – NYTimes.com

Geology in the news.

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Mickey Baker, Guitarist Whose Riffs Echo Today, Dies at 87 – NYTimes.com

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Rules for Targeted Killing – NYTimes.com

Drone rules. May it happen.

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Class Wars of 2012 – NYTimes.com

we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

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 The No. 10 Dashboard and Cybernetics – NYTimes.com

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‘I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed’: retired naval officer’s email to children in full – Telegraph

My U.K. daughter completely missed this.

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No Justice at Guantánamo – NYTimes.com

letter from DONALD J. GUTER, a retired Navy rear admiral, is president and dean of the South Texas College of Law.

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